


In Vino Veritas

by archea2



Category: Death Note
Genre: Doomed Relationship, M/M, Romance, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:35:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Yatsuba arc rewritten as an Aiber/L romance, complete with a few tips about Japanese sweet wines.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vino Veritas

**Author's Note:**

> I'd almost forgotten how much I loved these two, improbable as they may seem as a pair. Might dig up other WIPs some day...
> 
> Oh, and El-Rebia ought to be spelled Er-Rebia in English, but shhh. It's all for romance.

"Thierry Morello," says Thierry Morello, and raises his glass in a salute to his computer screen.

"Morello is actually a diminutive for Moor – you might not believe it, looking at me but according to the family lore, our ancestor cantered all the way up from Oum El-Rebia in Morocco. My guess is that he smoothtalked his way into Provence and tricked the first village beauty into giving him descendants. "

He presses his palm to the glass, letting the red pool warm to his touch. Wine has been a good teacher to Thierry over the last twelve years. "Hope he's proud of me. "

"El-Rebia?" the Gothic letter on his screen squeaks back and Thierry laughs his soft straight laugh, his Sesame to many hearts and deals. "Why, yes, Monsieur L. Perhaps you would like to use Rebia as a codename, now I have been el-ected as one of your many correspondants?"

But the letter flickers curtly, as if shaking its head in disapproval. "A naive idea. Rebia would give you away to anyone endowed with a smattering of geography." The flicker somehow pauses, then the voice resumes in what, at a lower pitch, would be a meditative tone. "Of course, since I now live in Japan, we could always spell it right to left. Aiber."

"Aiber it is," Thierry says in mock-solemnity, earning himself a crackly chuckle before the screen goes blank.

******

This exchange is the final call in a very bumpy ride that started with Aiber and one of his crew summering in Saint-Tropez, where they posed as millionaires in a millionaires' resort; things going very wrong and Aiber having to step between his co-conman's Sig and a crying eight year old millionaire-to-be; Inspector Deneuve's men leaving a back door conveniently unattended while arresting said co-conman; Aiber flying to Manhattan a few months later to stage a watertight "landlord scam" involving a penthouse with a dramatic view on the Upper West Side; Detective Coil's men condoning Aiber's improbable story as to the eleven deposit checks found in his possession - while retaining the checks (and Aiber still hasn't found where the leak came from); Aiber flying home with a serious dent to his Voltairian scepticism; and the all-mysterious L, who also happens to be Coil  _and_  Deneuve, finally gracing him with a personal call and a baptism free of charge.

Aiber tells his wife Valérie that he gave L his true name (not the Old French patronym on their bell) because he knew that L already knew it. Which is nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth as Valérie is quick to note when the Black Letter becomes a regular caller and Aiber spends more and more time talking to a screen. The truth, of course, is that Aiber has come to rely upon his invisible Providence to a degree that puzzles and alarms her. For Aiber, trust is a currency with an exchange rate that must be made to reap a maximum profit. Up to now there has only been one person whom he trusted freely and unconditionally – herself.

Aiber married Valérie because he loved her and wanted her to love him for himself. That was the one truth he thought would see him through his adult life, and it did, it did for a while. He can still remember those first glad nights, when he came home to kiss and tell, his mouth to her ear, her laughter warm and swollen,while the chilled champagne lingered on the Boule coffee table. Valérie, whom he saw as the keeper of his naked self. But then... but then the boy came, the child they'd both wanted, and she began to change. Cutting short his Arabian tales with questions like "But what will you tell him when" and "Don't we have enough money now to".

Of course they have enough money, Aiber answers irritably. Aiber's exceptionable skills – his golden touch and quicksilver tongue – have ensured that. But,  _chérie_ , you know what I am. And then he's gone for another month of roguing, and comes back to find Valérie looking more and more unhappy until — "Half a man at home, is that what you want ?" he yells and "Be careful you don't lose your  _better_ half" she snaps, and next thing he knows, their boy is standing in the kitchen doorframe with a hesitant "papa?" on his lips. Aiber curses under his breath, then smiles and talks softly to his son.

He waits until he's alone to open another bottle of Chambertin, since wine and wife no longer spell alike.

He loves the two of them. Honest to god, he does. And yes, he gets it why she's calling him selfish, but - that's just it: his self is there. It's not just that he gets off on the kicks, the thrill, the  _warmth_  of conning. Rather, as he keeps repeating in a language she no longer speaks by heart, that he can't be a whole man without it. Just as it takes dusk and morning to make a day, it takes Thierry and Aiber to make him — the simple man and the quick-change artist, the faithful husband and the cheater by trade, the  _bona fide_  Frenchman and the multinational crook, and the sum of him lies in that sharp balance point between art and truth.

Rest and play.

Being and becoming.

And thus, when Aiber tells L "I do not do this because I want to" in one of their late-night sessions, L simply says "I know". L, who is also Coyle and Deneuve, seems to understand Aiber's addictive urge to pour himself into another skin while never quite losing sight of who he is. Why else would he have gifted him with a name that hides yet proclaims Aiber's origins – as L's initial perhaps does ? (L ignores the friendly probe.)

To Valérie, L stands for the lightning that will blast her man into ruin. The letter which squeaks out in the dark of night and has become one of the reasons for what Aiber, with a modest smirk, calls his "little business ventures". Aiber can sense the fear and tries to make up for it as best as he can. But his self is no longer contained in Valérie's arms, the loose envelop of them, from night to morning. L is Aiber's new keeper – not his gaoler, as Valérie says, rather his gatekeeper, opening more and yet more secret passages between the  _chic_  apartment towering over the Arc de Triomphe and the parallel worlds where Aiber can finesse his way among the wealthy and the vile. L has become Aiber's drug mentor, and on the night when he calls to inquire in his quiet warped voice if his client would like to help him catch a schizophrenic mass-murderer using supernatural weapons, Aiber doesn't hesitate. He sends his inner Voltaire on a sabbatical, hugs the boy goodbye, promising to hunt for his missing Pokemon cards once the other chase is closed, kisses Valérie (his voice low, lissom, his adrenaline on a high) and in the next moment, Paris and the Seine are collapsing into a flat pool of grey down below, and Aiber is rocketing with sheer, incandescent joy. Finally,  _finally_ , he is going to meet L.

***

At first, Aiber is rather taken aback to find that his very own Trinity was made flesh in the person of a gangly twenty-something with a Neandertal slump, no sartorial instinct whatsoever and a compulsive sweet tooth.

It's not what he expected and Aiber's previsions rarely let him down. But then, he's never had to figure out a man's personality from a monitored squeal.

Still, L and the whole L-related business prove so enthralling that Aiber's dismay fades out after a few hours, never to return. Speak of kicks and thrills! He's higher than God in Heaven and the hypothetical Kira, or Kiras, in their Kirish dreams.

Work, as he soon tells L with a wink, is a piece of croissant. Not only does Aiber get his own Gothic letter (and it's bigger than Wedy's) but he doesn't even have to write his lines. His mentor is a bit reluctant to let him play Eraldo Coil, but Aiber won't be talked out of his brilliant idea and launches into the part with typical gusto. Soon enough, the gentlemen from Yotsuba Inc. are jostling one another to leap through his hoops and balance millions on their noses (he also gets an interminable text message from Mr Kida comparing his hair to "orphaned sun rays" – apparently a quotation from some minor poet of the Naka period— and asking if Eraldo-san would relish a little evening jaunt to the traditional sake-houses in Kayabukiya, but wisely ignores it). "Fast work" says L and Aiber's adrenaline swells with pride.

Of course he is doing this for the fun, merely for the fun.

Well, perhaps also because, according to his rather French logic, impersonating L's impersonation means that he is infiltrating one of L's multiple selves, which is only one step away from penetrating the real L.

Aiber is very keen to figure out L.

He tells himself that he should be worrying more about Kira but, if he's honest with himself (who else?), his whole attention is focused on the 24/7 show at L House. Notwithstanding his dashing looks, Aiber can morph into non-entity at the call of circumstances, and when not answering Mr Kida's pressing phone calls about hush money and sake tyrsts, he likes to linger at headquarters, a fair-haired shadow with an engaging smile. After a while, the others don't seem to mind him. Though Aiber knows better than to engage Chief Yagami in professional chit-chat, he is quick to detect another anxious father in Aizawa-san, and young Matsuda is close to hugging the kind foreigner once he's proved a Pokedex expert. Even silent Mogi steps up to him once to ask if Aiber knows the recipe for old-fashioned ratatouille (he does – it came in handy five years ago when he was selling Martha Stewart that allergen insurance scheme). Thus the foreigner is allowed to loiter on, carefully registering what he sees.

And there is much to register.

The way Soichiro Yagami looks at his son, for instance, when he thinks no one is observing him. Or the way Watari's presence can always be felt backstage after everybody has left but L and his prime suspect. And then — and then, there's L, reckless, extraordinary L, always on the beat, sometimes watching Aiber watch his motley crew with a snip of a smile and a finger on his lips, always beating Aiber's flick of eyes with his own steady gaze. Aiber peeps and peeps, but vision is obviously not enough.

Patience, he reminds himself, patience does it - and soon enough young Matsuda is rapping a timid knock at Aiber's door and Aiber's left hand is high-fiving his right. Of course the boy has come to thank his improvized stand-in after the Yotsuba fiasco, and of course it will only take a few compassionate "hums" and "ahs" for Matsuda to cough up ten months' worth of bulletins. The night is still young when Aiber sends the lad to rest with a continental pat on the arm and sits down on his bed to process the new news.

They leave him very thoughtful.

He tries to share his thoughts with Wedy, but Wedy doesn't give a hoot – she's here to do her job, pack her pay and take a ride back home. When Aiber suggests quietly that there might be more to young Light than his fawn-eyed pleas for cooperative work, Wedy gives him a racy wink and asks if he's jealous.

Aiber shrugs, but goes on observing Light. Meek and mild, kiss his pin-striped leg - there's something slug cold in that boy, and not just because he is the only male under forty who remains immune to Misa-Misa's charms. (Aiber himself must fight temptation at times — temptation to give the little imp a sound spanking and a good facial scrub.) Aiber's face remains pliable and smiling when he chats with the young man, but his inner conviction is made. L cannot be wrong.

October proceeds to die a natural death and Aiber's frustration leaps a notch. What on earth are they waiting for? It's obvious that one of the eight must be Kira. Why don't they force him to call his bluff, why are they waiting until more and more people are struck off? L is clearly feeling the tension, too – Aiber can see how his fetal crouch becomes more pronounced, how he relies on the comfort of sugar and rubs his naked feet against each other absent-mindedly. Aiber's trade has made him sensitive to body language and it irks him to see the others recoil before L's signs of distress, when they are so prompt to show concern over Soichiro's torment, Light's exasperation or Misa's frailty. Why should L alone be treated as a freak when he bends under the case? Time to jolt the case forward, Aiber decides, and comes up with another bright idea. "Be careful," a worried L admonishes him, but Aiber remarks loudly and publicly that L has saved him more than once – hear, hear – and throws in a quip about freedom debts to stay in character.

***

He is less proud of himself when the case, or chase, comes to a close and he misses the third Kira by a few shots. But when he apologizes to a wounded Yagami-san, the latter simply shakes his head — and, to his interlocutor's surprise, Aiber's hand. "You are a good man", Soichiro says and Aiber, for once, cannot find a ready reply. By the time he arrives for the final act, the curtain is set to fall over the villain's corpse. Aiber has been in Japan for less than three weeks and his part is over.

He stays on.

The atmosphere at HQ is very, very strange. Officially, the case is closed. Their prime suspect has been given a free hand to resume his studies and do his parents proud. Their secondary prime suspect will resume her own career as Tokyo's new shooting star. The policemen come and go, talking not of Michelangelo but of death statistics, past and present, and post-Kira obligations. Or so Aiber supposes — he prefers to avoid the Situation Room, keeping to his room or leaving the building incognito for a few hours: he hasn't forgotten Wedy's crash course on its security system. Trays of food pop up before his door and once he catches a glimpse of Watari making his bed as he returns from touring Tokyo's business center. The old gentleman simply inclines his head and holds the door open for him. A few days run their course and Aiber, watching a cloud-coloured sky from his bay window, takes up his cell phone to call Valérie only to find that he cannot make it past the first international code. Instead, he makes it past the door.

When he comes back a little before midnight, his door is unlocked and L is sitting on his bed, his naked feet clasped in his arms.

Aiber closes the door, slowly, before he crosses the room to sit on the chair next to the bed. He has forgotten to switch on the lights and L's eyes are a cipher in the dusk.

No one has written him lines for this.

Then L's face moves into a smile which is another puzzle until its author says : "Today is my birthday, Aiber-san. I was born on the 31rst October."

Aiber-san, conman extraordinaire, remains tongue-tied.

Thierry Morello, Frenchman to the core, recovers his soon enough. "Then we must toast you", he offers and laughs suddenly, either because L's smile takes all the darkness away, or because of the simple idea of L as a drink-buddy. "I'm sorry, Ryuzaki, if I'd known... see, Watari has kindly set up a stash in my room, the man obviously knows all about my  _péché mignon_ , but damned if I can spot any fruit juice... unless you'll settle for my toothbrush glass and plain tap water... "

L's smile widens, and Aiber goes on laughing, his head a-tingle with the clear, glorious fizz that usually comes after his third glass of Mumm. "Wait, wait, wait. We can do better than orange squash. Lemoncello? Lemoncello is plain stoned lemonade, you know. Bailey's? You like coffee. Or... got it ! Chocolate Mint Schnaps!" Aiber's babble is triumphant but L shakes his head.

"No. Gekkeian plum wine."

... Gekkeian plum wine ?

"Behind the Bailey's", L goes on, his eyes never leaving the seasoned criminal now energetically ransacking his own closet. "They wait for the first frost in Wakayama to gather the plums, so they are sweet and juicy." Aiber finally locates a plump purple bottle and, while searching frantically for a second glass, hears the bottle pop open behind his back like the Arabian lamp in the Arabian tale his mother used to tell him. He is no longer poor and fatherless, but L is a genie if there was one, and his room is smelling like all the Mays in this century,  _and_   _what the hell is with him_? Aiber draws in a long breath and turns around to find L handing out a glass.

"But you must drink too!"

The enigmatic birthday boy goes on smiling. Then, unhurriedly, almost meditatively, he touches his fingertip to the drink and lets it brush his customary spot on his lower lip.

Aiber stares.

By the time L has licked his finger, there's nothing he can say because the glass is being firmly pressed to his mouth and he is drinking and drinking, and the wine is going to his blood, leaving it dazed and crazed and redder than it's ever been before.  All the Mouton-Rotschild and Romanée-Conti bought for a queen's ransom and labelled with loving care by Aiber's own right hand pale before this. It's cheap. It's sticky. It's utterly, utterly intoxicating and Aiber's hand closes upon L's, tipping the glass all the way up until the last dark drop has been consumed and only L's fingers remain pressed to his lips.

L seems to hesitate, then, as if he had been there at the time, repeats Soichiro Yagami's words carefully : "You are a good man, Aiber-san."

Aiber's inner monologue at this stage is less ethically oriented. It hovers between  _Merde_  and  _Mon dieu_.

But twelve years of practice have taught him that a con artist's survival hangs upon his sense of timing. Timing is what makes his trade akin to the actor's craft. There is a time for speaking and there is a time for letting the prey speak, there is a time for cunning and there is a time for doing, and in the ticking moment between thought and act, there is no time for letting others chose for you.

Aiber's last thought is for his ancestor, cantering up into  _terra incognita_. Then he stands up and, letting his heart chose the pace, crosses the space that separates the chair from the bed.

****

November the 1rs is the Day of the Dead in France. Aiber gives it a passing thought and grins.

****

What comes next is a bunch of mad halcyon days.

The bed is their illicit headquarters, to which they're both headed when L can escape the rest of their bunker for a few hours of rest and play. Aiber no longer leaves his room. He would turn off his phone but for the chance that L might want to talk to him during the time when he is not in bed. Instead, he muffles it under the pillows when there's a call from France, ashamed, tormented, oblivious as soon as L's steps are heard outside the door and the early morning gleam ricochets on the Gekkeian's purple belly. Under the gleam, on the pillow, L's mouth curves into a smile that is both child-like and faun-like.

Topsy-turvy days, every frontier trampled upon. Their lovemaking is awkward and haphazard, its only fixed feature the sweet plum wine from Wakayama which leaves their mouths a little tart and more daring every time. Sometimes L's body takes the upper hand and Aiber, well-toned, supple Aiber, bends and opens to him. Sometimes it's Aiber's turn to coax L into unfolding in his arms, his shoulders arched back in pleasure, although when L finally dozes off he returns to his hunched posture in Aiber's lap, with Aiber mentally comparing himself to a mother marsupial.

Insane happy days, only interrupted by snacks of red bean cakes and whispered tales. Aiber tells a little of his childhood in the sunny, grimy streets of a Marseilles suburb, and L sometimes reciprocates with clipped sentences. "I miss the trees", he says once. And, kissing Aiber's gold-dusted chin: "that beautiful light" (Aiber freezes, but it turns out that L is thinking of a stained window he saw as a child).

A trieve, not an armistice. Aiber can see that L, when he prepares to step down and back to his fencing hall, is grim and confused. L still hasn't caught all of his Kiras and young Yagami, much to Aiber's disquiet, continues to haunt the place. But then, confusion is their staple diet. Take Aiber's case: in his native France, it is still deemed impossible by many that a married man, a father, should be attracted to another man. Homosexuality should be left to left-wing celibates or, as one Prime Minister famously declared, public school British boys.

But then of course, many would also say that it is impossible for a thief to be a good man.

Aiber says bullshit and reaches for L. L provides kicks and thrills that Aiber's body never knew existed, nor his soul when L's eyes dilate with enchantment under his care, or L's throat gives the little moans and gurgles that Aiber finds strangely endearing. Night morphs into day and the dark circles under his lover's eyes seem to have faded a little. On their third day together, L agrees to try a salad. Aiber feels elated.

****

On the 4rth of November, he receives two phone calls.

"Aiber, please do not leave your room today," L says in the small hours, and Aiber cannot help laughing.

"Afraid I'll take a French leave?" he teases.

The hours come and go, Aiber remains. He takes to walking from bed to door and back to bed, and once he goes as far as giving the door a cautious nudge, but the corridor is empty and he gave his word to stay. Thief's honour.

Watari's steps must have been muffled by the carpet. The tray lies on the ground when Aiber re-opens the door at three, and the Gekkeian responds bitterly to the cold meal. He gives up at six and tries the phone, in vain.

It is half past ten when the phone rings back and by now, Aiber is ready to dissect the whole citadel with his coffee spoon if it's not L on the active end of the line. L's voice crackles out, as tranchant as on the day he told Aiber that nobody played Coil but himself.

"Aiber-san, I want you to leave headquarters."

Aiber cannot tell what is the greater shock, the dismissal or the formal address that precedes it. "Please explain yourself", he manages to say with the Gekkeian's acid trail on his palate and another three words –  _play for time_  – in his mind. And L explains at length, in his neat, tranchant words, telling him that Kira has killed again and that it has become too dangerous for Aiber to stay.

"That's for me to say" Aiber says, matching blunt to sharp, and that is when L explains tersely about the Shinigami's existence and the Shinigami eyes that will allow any Kira on the grounds to know their real names. By the time L is done, Aiber is sitting on the chair, now facing the window, a dark view under his eyes.

"Everything Watari and I had on you, I have deleted," L is saying. "You have never been arrested, never even been suspected. Wedy's relatives make her case more problematic but if you go undercover, there is a fair 75% chance that you may survive."

"And yours is... ?" Aiber asks in the neutral voice he used two weeks before to request a ten million fee from Mr Kida.

Silence answers much in the same tone.

"Take your own advice, then." If only his mouth let him breathe  _and_  talk, he could focus on keeping his tones blander. "Cheat. Hide. Lie. Lie low, that's it, pretend you're gone..." — Aiber laughs curtly – "... pull a Matsuda on them!  _Merde_ , man! What use is a dead detective to a case?" No, that won't do. Slower, lower, breathe, get attuned, think,  _think_ , that's L you're dealing with so there has to be one fucking logical trump somewhere in this shuffle deck.

"Come to France with me." The words tumble out before he can frame them - urgent, graceless, and, he realizes with rising self-contempt, utterly unconvincing.

There is a pause before L's predictable answer. "Kira is not in France."

Aiber lashes out with Gallic abandon, cursing and pleading in turn until his voice has been frayed to a tattered rasp. When he can no longer scream, he hisses. In his mind, he can see L standing in front of his monster screens, his phone hanging from the slim fingertips that only a day before were touching the rim of Aiber's glass, Aiber's jaw, his arms, his thighs. The vision fuels the wrath. Still Aiber rages, and still L answers "Please be careful" till the view becomes one dark cover and the Frenchman's eyes close in exhaustion.

They open to a sky turning a blank page across the glass partition and a phone still craddled in his lap. Aiber takes up the phone wearily. There is no ringing signal. Instead, there is a very faint, very far sound of someone breathing, like a sigh that will not tell its name. As Aiber presses the phone closer, the sky begins to rain.

Aiber looks at the blurred dawn and speaks the three words he once told Valérie, and they'd better sound as true as they did then.

Then he hangs off, packs up and, not bothering to shower or shave, takes his French leave. As a last-minute thought, he grabs the plump bottle left on the window sill.

The rain is pouring as he steals a last look at Tokyo from his taxi window.

******

Valérie asks no question when told that they must leave their six-room flat and move into Belleville, that busy honeycomb of ethnicities and trades. They rent a very small house near the Buttes-Chaumont and the boy soon learns that he must not mention his previous address or, indeed, his previous name to any of his new schoolmates.

Aiber morphs into a financial consultant working at home, not that anyone in their surroundings seems much interested. In the morning, he drives his son to school, does some shopping for Valérie and strides the Buttes up and down until it is time for lunch. In the afternoon, he checks on his stock market shares, reads, tries his hand at gardening. When his son is back from school, Aiber plays some Pokemon games and helps him with his homework. Valérie pretends this is the happy simple life she craved and Aiber does his best to play the part.

He does allow himself a trieve, an interlude, from 6 to 7, when his wife is in the kitchen and his son before the TV set. Aiber opens his laptop and gives his heart one hour before he turns it off and helps Valérie carry the dishes into the living-room. He holds little hope of communication – while the task force have means of contacting his alias, his only interlocutors so far have been L and Watari — but at least he can check his Aiber mail and comb the Net for news of Japan.

And then, on some early December day, there is one new message waiting for him in his Aiber inbox. Aiber's heart rears, then thuds to a dead still. The mail is from Light Yagami.

( _... Mon dieu..._ )

In his well-waxed college English, young Yagami deplores that he must send Aiber a sad piece of news. One of their mutual acquaintances has met with an untimely end – in fact he died in Light's arms the day after Aiber left Tokyo. The writer apologizes for not having informed his late friend's friend of their friend's demise earlier on but priority had to be given to said friend's spiritual and temporal succession. In fact, Light is happy to tell Aiber that their friend had named him (Light) as his rightful heir and that he has agreed to take up this honorable, if not honorary position. Every help, every ally is precious in this fight, and Light begs Aiber agreed to renew contact with him in the spirit of cooperative solidarity that he (Light) has been eager to promote from the first.

The bastard has even scanned a close-up of a grave in twilight.

Aiber finds that he is standing before his desk, hunched over his computer screen, battling nausea with every word he reads. So Kira is stepping into the late Ryuzaki's shoes. Never did metaphor sound more inept, and Aiber's fists clench against the hard wood of the desk as he stares at Light Yagami's new signature, still in parenthesis for now but soon to colonize his screen as a ghostly reminder of its predecessor.

Aiber's sense of proprietary ethics has always been wobbly to say the least, but the thought of that psychotic little twerp sporting L's blazon fills him with white-hot outrage.

Seconds linger into minutes in what seems to him an eon-lasting pause. He can hear Valérie calling the boy to help her set the table and there's a smell of warmth and gravy squeezing past the door. Aiber slowly unfolds his hands and places them over the keyboard.

Seventy-five percent, no less, no more. But gone is the thrill of uncertainty and Aiber will no longer take any chance. He thinks for another minute, then types a carefully worded answer, mixing friendly condolences with a dab of cynical humour. Aiber is very sorry to hear about their friend's precocious departure from this valley of tears. He is quite certain that young Mr Yagami will prove worthy of his new career choices. Should Light ever need Aiber's professional assistance, the latter will be happy to offer it at a bargain price in memory of their former Kira-bound ventures. Will Light please convey Aiber's greetings to his honorable father and his father's honorable colleagues? And to his charming fiancée ? Should their new mission leave them some time for a continental escapade, Aiber would be more than happy to show them the City of Light, haha. Meanwhile, he remains at MM. Yagami's disposal.

Aiber grins a little as his fingers beat a final tatoo over the keys.  _Yours truly, Thierry Morello_.

Of course, L would say that the probability of Chief Yagami hacking into his son's compacted email storage when – if – he learns of Aiber's death and finding excellent proof that Light knew Aiber's name is 1 ‰. Aiber, ever the gambler, will back this chance.

He checks his watch, aware that 7 p.m. in France means 4 a.m. in Japan. Light Yagami is a self-disciplined young man with a healthy sleep agenda: Aiber has an advantage of three hours over Kira, twice more than is needed. He is leaving his family a clean slate and a well-fed bank account – courtesy of Yotsuba Inc. He wonders if he should also leave a note to apologize for his selfishness but no, no, better let them put the blame on a high-wired lifetime. With a strange, fizzy sense of peace, he switches off his computer, stretches his arms and rummages in the main drawer of his desk for the cellar key.

Connoisseurs will tell you that all cheap wines, including Gekkeian, must be left to breathe one hour before consumption.


End file.
